


Little Orphant Annie

by thestuffedalligator



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Don't look at me like that, Drabble, Memes, Not Canon Compliant, i just. really want dc to bring annie back from the dcau, multiple references to batman canon through smoothie names, really just a short test of concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 01:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19074337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestuffedalligator/pseuds/thestuffedalligator
Summary: "Whatcha got there, Tim?""A smoothie."





	Little Orphant Annie

Dick looked at Tim. He looked at the girl. He looked at Tim again.

Tim drank his smoothie.

It was a standoff that had now been going on for a full two minutes, with an intensity that had first unsettled and then bored the girl. She had taken to looking around the main foyer of Wayne Manor with quiet awe, like a tourist in a cathedral.

Dick recognized this game. It was one that he’d played with Tim for years, although neither of them had given it a name. It had started when Tim, exhausted after cracking one of Cobblepot’s heists, had returned to the Batcave one night with an ostrich. Dick had entered the cave to find Tim slowly drinking an espresso, staring at a distant stalactite with a dead-eyed expression and the ostrich nibbling his hair affectionately. Ever since, they each took turns bringing increasingly ridiculous things from their patrols back to Wayne Manor, the other pointedly pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary whatsoever. If one of them cracked, the point went to the other man.

Two weeks ago, Dick had brought a Themysciran kangaroo the same night that Tim brought back a sentient clothes mannequin who had been shot into space by Ronald Reagan. After Bruce was forced to intervene, the game was officially put on hold.

Dick looked at the girl again. She was young, around twelve, thirteen years old. She wore crumpled, oversized clothes, had a cute but unremarkable face, and her black hair was cut into a choppy bob. Dick saw kids like her every night, usually teens he tried to direct to the shelter.

He looked at Tim. His expression was unreadable behind those sunglasses (it was ten at night, why in hell did he have sunglasses), but he was sure that Tim was managing the trick of grinning without twitching a muscle. There was a wonderful and elaborate private joke happening here, and Dick was fucked if he tried to figure out what it was.

He sighed. “Whatcha got there, Tim?” he asked.

Tim lifted the cup. “A smoothie,” he said. “King Nut from Egghead’s, if you want to know.”

There was another pause. Then so clearly that Dick started, the girl said, “And a Colonel Gum,” and lifted up her own, much smaller smoothie cup.

Tim turned to her, all interest in Dick apparently evaporating. “How is it, by the way?”

The girl drank a bit of it. She wrinkled her nose. “A bit too sweet,” she said. “Sorry.”

Tim nodded. “Yeah, Egghead’s is way too sweet for me. I only go because they have the King Nut.”

She grinned at him. “Because of the name?”

“Ninety-nine percent because of the name,” Tim said, nodding solemnly. “The last one percent is that a small King Nut has the caffeine content of, like, two cups of coffee.”

The styrofoam cup in Tim’s hand was at least a jumbo. Tim sucked air from the bottom of the cup with a low, wet rattle, and moved to leave it on the Chippendale. Alfred materialized and whisked it away.

Dick rolled his eyes, knelt until he was at eye level with the girl, and smiled. “My name is Detective Grayson,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, Miss…?”

The girl finally smiled at him. This was apparently the password she was waiting for. “I’m Annie,” she said. “Mister Drake told me a lot about you.”

“All terrible things, I’m guessing.”

She shrugged. “Not really. He called you an ‘idiot sunshine boy,’ but he was smiling when he said it.”

Dick glared at Tim. “He was, was he,” he said. Ice slithered off every word.

He turned back to Annie. “Annie, Tim’s being an idiot, so I have to ask. What are you doing here tonight?”

For the first time in their interaction, Annie turned shy. “Well. Um. It was supposed to be a good first impression.”

Dick frowned. “Sorry,” he said. “What do you mean?”

She tucked some hair behind her right ear. “Well - he’s adopting me.”

The pause turned into an ugly silence. “Annie,” Dick said after he had carefully chosen his words, “you’ve made a wonderful first impression with me. You’re a bright, interesting girl, and I’d love to talk more with you. That said,” he stood up, “would you mind going with Alfred into the other room? I’d like to talk with Tim for just a moment.”

 _Because I’m probably going to murder him_ , he added privately as Alfred lead her out of the main foyer into a hallway,  _and I’d like you not to witness it_.

He waited until a distant door clicked shut. He wheeled around.

“What the fuck, Drake.”

Tim sighed. “I couldn’t think of how to break the news to you.”

“What the  _actual fuck_ , Drake.” He squeezed his fingers in the air, shaping the invisible Play-Doh of his thoughts. “Does Bruce know about this?”

Tim laughed bitterly. “Oh yes, Bruce knows. Bruce is the one instigating this whole thing.” He took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, and for the first time Dick saw the black rings around Tim’s eyes. “He’s put the whole process up on me. I’m the one who has to fake a social security number and birth certificate,  _and_ go over Arkham’s Containment and Care documents.” He leveled a glare at Dick. “Did you know that Clayface poops? I could’ve gone my whole life not knowing that Clayface poops.”

Dick paused, suddenly lost at sea. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Tim drew himself up, breathed in and out dramatically, and put his sunglasses back on. “It’s Annie,” he said. “She’s a Clayface.”

Dick paused. He opened his mouth. He shut it. He opened his mouth again. He shut it again. “Explain,” he said.

* * *

The story turned out to be two stories.

The first happened years ago, when Tim had only just donned the domino and cape. There had been a night when he was allowed to go on patrol solo and he’d found a girl lost in the streets. He called her Annie, and tried to protect her from the man hunting her down. Then the man turned out to be Clayface and Annie vanished, because the world was cruel, because Tim hadn’t moved fast enough, because of stupid, stupid,  _stupid_  coincidence.

It was the day that Tim had learned that sometimes, there were no happy endings.

The second story was only four days old. Tim had decided to inspect Wayne Chemical when a worker decided to reveal he was actually a ten-foot-tall monster made of mud and went on a rampage.

In seconds, the warehouse was on fire, tanks and barrels frothing and exploding in the heat. Then  _something_  soaked deep into Clayface’s flesh, and this  _something_  kept him preoccupied while Tim led the evacuation effort.

When he saw someone reaching out to him in the fire, he pulled the body up and into his arms out of unconscious reaction, and it was only when they were out of the building - when the howls of Clayface and the smell of the smoke were behind him and the flashing lights of Gotham’s police and fire department where ahead - that he happened to look at the girl he was holding.

It was then that he realized he was looking at a ghost.

It was then that he realized that sometimes, there were happy endings.

Or happy beginnings, anyways.


End file.
